A history of northeast Missouri, Vol. 2 pt 2, Part 22

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 912

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Mr. Briggs is a member of the blue lodge of the Masonic order and himself, wife and daughter are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and he is one of the stewards of that body.

JOHN W. BOYD is a leading farmer of Buffalo township and has passed his life on a farm within a few miles of his birthplace. His father, Azel J. Boyd, was born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, in 1812, and was fourteen years old when his father, Abner Boyd, the grandfather of the subject, brought the family out to Missouri and settled in Pike county.

Abner Boyd's remote American ancestor was one of two Scotch brothers who came to the United States during the primitive era of our national life. These brothers are now commonly distinguished by the color of their hair, one being red haired and the other black. The for- mer settled farther north than did his brother of the raven locks, and it was from him that Abner Boyd and his posterity claim descent. He mar- ried a Miss Scott, who died at their home near Scott Springs on the head of Buffalo creek, and both are buried in one of the old cemeteries of that locality. Among their large family of children were Azel J., Levi, Ewing, Silas and Elizabeth, the last three of whom fell victims to fever after reaching mature years, and the parents also died in the same year. All lived to be grown. Isabella became the wife of Alfred Burks; Mary J. married Frank Richmond; Wedin; Adlai; Porter; Margaret, now Mrs. Frank Baxter of Hannibal, Missouri; James and Alfred of Louisiana, Missouri.

Azel J. Boyd lived among the pioneers of Pike county and made agri- culture his life work. He received such educational advantages only as the rural communities afforded him, and his home was the farm of Lel Henderson near Mt. Zion church. He raised a company of soldiers for the Mexican war and was made captain of it, drilling it on what was known as Booth Prairie,. out of which the farms of the valley south of Buffalo church were subsequently carved. His company was never called into the field, and the only service they engaged in was the faith- ful drilling they saw at the hands of their captain. During the progress of the Civil war the indications are that he was in sympathy with the cause of the Union, though he was ever a radical in politics, taking the Democratic side of the fence. He expressed himself freely upon all pub- lic questions, could give and take in neighborly debate, and was alto- gether a man of some prominence and power in his community. He mar- ried Eliza J. Griffith, a daughter of William Griffith, who came from Kentucky to Missouri among the pioneers. She died in 1900 at the advanced age of seventy-one and was the mother of eleven children : John W., the eldest ; William, who died in May, 1912, leaving a family of four children ; Martha J. married Ezra Martin and died in St. Louis; Eliza- beth became the wife of Rit Barger and died in Pike county ; Ellen mar- ried Henry Baxter and spent her life in Pike county, with the exception of a few years spent in Colorado, where she died; Frank is engaged in

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the insurance business in Louisiana, Missouri; Melzena married George F. Wood and resides near Bowling Green; Marietta became Mrs. Davis Jewell and resides in Shreveport, Louisiana; Silas died in 1893; Mar- garet married Gordon Martin and is a resident of the Ashley community of Pike county, and Harvey J. is a resident of Pike county. The father of this family died in 1880.

John W. Boyd was born July 10, 1847, and he reached man's estate in much the same manner of the average country youth prior to the war, his education being limited to a few months in school during the winter season until he reached his teens. His splendid physical strength and his energy and willingness made him an ideal farm hand, and he worked for wages from the time he was of legal age until he was twenty-seven. He married on December 10, 1874, and came to his present home in 1892. His home farm is represented by 234 acres of fertile and pro- ductive land in Buffalo township which he has improved in the most substantial manner. He has cultivated it intelligently and under his careful management the place has produced most abundantly of grain and other kindred crops, while he has always done a considerable in the way of stock-raising. By degrees he increased his products and became a feeder of his own stock, carrying his product to the St. Louis market, and is known today for one of the independent and well-to-do farmers of his community.

As mentioned above, Mr. Boyd was married on December 10, 1874, Miss Rosalie Baxter becoming his bride. She is a daughter of James Baxter, first lieutenant of Captain Boyd's company of Mexican war recruits, and was a settler in Pike county from Kentucky, the state which has contributed so much in pioneer stock to this section of Mis- souri. Lieutenant Baxter married Lavina Price and their children were Amanda, who married Marshel Branden, of Farber, Missouri; Matilda, who became the wife of T. F. Chamberlain and is a resident of Pike county ; Elizabeth P., who became wife of Rev. W. T. Sallee, and is now a resident of Los Angeles, California ; Henry passed away in Manitou, Colorado; Harrison is a resident of Los Angeles, California; Rosalie, who became Mrs. Boyd, and Edward and Rufus, both of whom passed away in Pike county, Missouri.

Mr. and Mrs. Boyd became the parents of nine children, as follows : J. Orville, attorney for the Keokuk Water Power Company, and for seven years a teacher in the public schools, married to Genevra Ander- son, daughter of Rev. J. W. Anderson, of Keokuk, Iowa, in December, 1906. She died August, 1909, leaving a little son, Anderson Bemrose. In March, 1912, J. Orville was married to Ruth Gaston, daughter of Dr. S. M. Gaston, of Keokuk. Walter A., a farmer of Buffalo Valley, married Stella Shy; Bertha, the wife of Hobart Hunter, a farmer near Buffalo church; Janie, the wife of Charles Sizemore, of Louisiana, Mis- souri; Elizabeth, the wife of Peerless Elgin, of Clarksville, Pike county ; Herbert C. married Ermyl Parker and lives on the parental homestead ; Eddie died by accident at the age of nine years; Carl C., an engineer for the Keokuk Water Power Company, and Floy, a young lady at home.

The family are members of the Presbyterian church, and Mr. Boyd is a Democrat in his political faith.

MISS MINNIE K. ORGAN was formerly assistant librarian of the State Historical Society of Missouri. She is now principal of the high school at her home in Salem, Dent county, Missouri. She has made a special study of the history of the county press in Missouri and has published in the State Historical Review a number of articles giving the results of her research.

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JAMES A. SINCLAIR, clerk of the Louisiana Court of Common Pleas, is one of the pioneer newspaper men and lawyers of Pike county, Mis- souri, where he has resided for more than forty years. From law student and practitioner to reporter for local papers and back again, as his for- tunes waxed and waned; in the public eye as a deputy, on to the capitol at Washington as clerk of committee work in the United States senate, and finally back to his old haunts and friends and into the fields explored by him as a young man,-this, in brief, outlines the career of James A. Sinclair.

The Sinclairs, as the name indicates, are of Scottish origin. Some members of the family use the form "St. Clair," but both names are found on the early colonial records, and in Virginia the Sinclairs figured prominently.

William B. Sinclair, the father of James A., was born in Prince Wil- liam county, Virginia, in 1804. His wife, Ann Maria (Johnson) Sin- clair, was born in 1813, and they became the parents of the following named children : William, the eldest son, was killed near Orange, Vir- ginia, in 1862, while with his command as a private in the Eighteenth Mississippi Regiment, Confederate States of America. M. Louisa, de- ceased ; Arthur G., of Washington, D. C .; Cornelia and Dr. Robert O., of Warrenton, Virginia; Alice, deceased ; A. M., also deceased, late of Leland, Washington county, Mississippi; Kate O., the wife of Henry Wayman, of Jeffersonton, Virginia; Charles E., deceased; and James A., of this review.

James Ashby Sinclair was born in Fauquier county, Virginia, on October 10. 1848. There he attended a select school, taught by his sis- ter, until he was a youth of fourteen years, when in company with two other boys of about the same age, he ran away from home to join Lee's army. This was on or about September 12, 1862, shortly after the sec- ond battle of Manassas, and only a few days prior to the battle of Antie- tam. His home town, Warrenton, was occupied by Federal troops at the time, but no attention was paid to the three small boys as they walked away to join the Confederate army. Two days later the boys arrived at Berryville, Virginia, tired and footsore. The companions of Mr. Sinclair were discouraged and talked of going back home. Heavy cannonading was also heard from the direction of Harper's Ferry. and it proved to be the engagement that resulted in the killing of General Miles and the capture of his entire command by Stonewall Jackson, at Bolivar Heights, near Harper's Ferry. A council of war was held, and the two other boys, concluding that they had seen enough of war, decided to return home. He parted with his two young companions and it was indeed a dejected and unhappy small boy who sat by the roadside with tears in his eyes and watched them until they disappeared from view. The picture of their appearance on that occasion remains indelibly im- pressed upon his memory, and his feelings at the time can better be imagined than described. Soon after the departure of his two compan- ions, two Confederate soldiers who had been slightly wounded at the second battle of Manassas were making their way to their command, which was a part of the Louisiana Brigade. They chanced upon young Sinclair and stopped to talk with him. They had already met the two returning runaways, and talked with them, and they then urged Sinclair to overtake them and return home with his friends. Their advice and entreaties were unavailing, however, as he told them that his home was within the enemy's lines, and that he had made up his mind to join the army. The two soldiers, seeing that the boy was unwavering in his resolve, took him along with them, and offered to look after him as long as he stayed with them. He accepted their offer and accompanied them. Vol. III-10

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Two days later, when the battle of Antietam was raging, they waded the Potomac river, at Shepherdstown, Virginia, and made their way towards the battle field, only two miles east in Maryland. They met a constant stream of wounded Confederates all along the road, those who were able to walk being on foot, and others on stretchers and in wagons. The battle raged until nightfall, and with his soldier companions, young Sinclair was an eye witness to it. Both armies were so badly crippled that the battle was not renewed. The next day the armies fronted each other and not a gun was fired. That night Lee's army silently fell back across the Potomac into Virginia. Sinclair stayed with the two soldiers and recrossed the river with them. They slept in a doorway in Shep- herdstown that night and early the next day the Federal forces opened fire upon the town from the Maryland side. A few miles out from Shep- herdstown he bade farewell to his soldier friends and set out on foot for Winchester, near which place he joined Brooke's battery, commanded by Capain J. V. Brooke, of Warrenton, Virginia. This battery was then a part of the First Virginia Regiment of artillery under Colonel Brown. It was subsequently assigned to Poague's Battalion, where it remained until the close of the war. He was enlisted as bugler of his battery and took part in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettys- burg. For a short time prior to the battle of Gettysburg he acted as courier for General Pettigrew. In November, 1863, after the battle of Bristow Station, where his horse was killed, he was taken prisoner and confined for a time in the Old Capitol prison at Washington City. From there he was taken to Point Lookout, Maryland, where some fifteen thousand other Confederates were being held. Point Lookout was laid out like a city. At the foot of each street, or "division" as it was called, was a large, roughly constructed building called a cook house, where the prisoners took their meals. As these meals were somewhat scant at times, a prisoner would watch his chance and take two meals instead of one, if opportunity afforded. They were watched rather closely, however, and when one was caught in the act of filching an extra meal he was taken out and turned over to the guards who put a barrel shirt on him, marked in huge letters "Flanker," and compelled to march a beat for a certain number of hours,-a ludicrous spectacle for thousands of eyes. Soon after arriving at Point Lookout public notices were posted inviting all prisoners to call at a certain place, and signed by a Federal officer. Young Sinclair, in response to the notices, appeared one day at a large tent, in which were several officers. One of the officers, who was a German, put this proposition to him in broken Dutch: "Do you wish to take the oath of allegiance to the United States, go north and work on government work, enlist in the United States army and go West and fight mit the Indians or remain in prison until exchanged ?" He told the officer he wished to stay in prison until duly exchanged and departed. A number of Confederates, however, availed themselves of it and some of them are still living who enlisted in the United States army and served until the close of the war, and are on Uncle Sam's pension roll, having served on both sides.

After several months spent in what was called the "Bull Ring" Mr. Sinclair was selected to act as bugler for the hospital. It was his duty to blow the sick calls for the doctors and to be generally at the beck and call of the medical staff. All this time he was on the lookout for an opportunity to get away, and when an exchange party, made up of in- valids was being arranged, he slipped into it, and assuming a most dejected and afflicted mien, successfully passed inspection. With about eight hundred Confederate prisoners, mostly sick, he was put aboard the United States transport "Herman Livingston." There were four

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other vessels with prisoners from Fort Delaware, Elmira, New York, and other prisons. They were sent to Hampton's Roads, thence off Cape Hatteras and on to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where they were transferred to Confederate vessels, and taken up the Savannah river, landing at Savannah, Georgia. There were about eight thousand Con- federates in all, and they received a royal welcome at the hands of the citizens of Savannah, who turned out en masse and escorted them to a magnificent park where a fine dinner was served them, to which, it is needless to say, they did ample justice. They were given a furlough of ninety days, three months' pay and transportation to Richmond, Vir- ginia.

Arriving at Richmond, young Sinclair paid a brief visit to his home and spent several days in Loudoun county with friends, who were mem- bers of Company A, Mosby's Battalion. A few days before Christmas, in 1864, he went on a raid with a party of Moshy's men, commanded by Captain Bush Underwood. There were only twenty-eight men in the party. They rode all night and daylight found them between two camps of Federals on the road between Fairfax C. H. and Vienna Station, only a few miles from Washington. They put guards on the road and cap- tured a sergeant belonging to the Sixth New York Cavalry. He was rid- ing a fine horse, and while Captain Underwood was putting his saddle on the sergeant's horse to exchange it for his own, which was jaded and spent with the night's ride, one of the guards came up from the road and reported a party of Federal cavalry with wagons were coming. The party consisted of about eighty men of the Sixth New York Cavalry, with a lieutenant in command. After a brief engagement, in which Sinclair's horse was killed, the only loss his party suffered, the Federals were dispersed, their commanding officer and a number of men killed, and eight men and eighteen horses captured. One of the prisoners was shot in the back and left at a farm house as the raiders beat a hasty retreat back to Loudoun county. A horse was given Sinclair in place of the one he had lost, and he returned to his home, where he remained until early in January, 1865, when he left for Richmond, still riding the captured horse. In a few days he rejoined his battery, stationed at Drury's Bluff, opposite Dutch Gap, where the Federal general, Ben. F. B. Butler, was attempting to turn the course of the James river by build- ing a canal. His battery was engaged in shelling the canal where the Federals were working negroes. He had been absent from the command then for more than a year, but he resumed his place as bugler and took part in the last campaign, ending with the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox on Sunday, April 9, 1865. About two P. M. of that event- ful day, he was sitting on his horse near where his battery was stationed, talking to James Wayman, a member of the Fourth Virginia Cavalry. He knew that the army was surrounded, and at times during the day had seen white flags displayed. A Federal officer, with an orderly carry- ing a white flag, rode by them on the way to confer with General Lee. The officer was young and handsome with long yellow hair hanging upon his shoulders. He never ascertained who this officer was, but he always believed it to be General Custer. Shortly after this incident General Lee and his staff rode by. Seeing a red-headed friend by the name of Hammond with General Lee's staff, whom he thought he had left at Point Lookout only a few months before, he rode up and shook hands with him. In reply to his inquiries, Hammond said: "The jig is up; Lee has surrendered." He then joined Wayman and both followed thousands of Confederate soldiers who were going in the direction of a high bluff a short distance from Appomattox, and who were determined not to stay and witness the surrender. There were men from Georgia,

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the Carolinas, Virginia, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky, Maryland, nearly all of whom had followed the fortunes of Lee and his army for four years. They knew their leader had surrendered and they were discour- aged, disgruntled and disheartened, and many of them were desperate. Some of them swore that they would join General Johnston ; that the sur- render of Lee did not of necessity end the war. Some were weeping, and yet others were cursing. The main body of them, however, were silent, as they rode or walked away. While their hopes for the success of the cause which they held to be sacred were crushed forever, they were relieved to know that the war was at last over, and that they could return to their homes and loved ones, and resume peaceful pursuits once more. True, many of their homes were broken and destroyed and the country left bare and desolate by the ravages of war; yet they were not entirely without hope in the world. At least twenty-five thousand men rode or walked away from Appomattox on that day, and only about nine thou- sand remained and surrendered with General Lee.

Arriving at the foot of the big bluff, Sinclair and Wayman led their horses to the summit, where they listened to the music of General Grant's military bands, making merry over their victory. After rest- ing for a short time they made their way down the other side of the bluff, at the foot of which they came to what was called Walker's Ferry. They paid an old negro five dollars in Confederate money for taking them across the river, and as they were exhausted from loss of sleep, they lay on a porch at the first farm house they came upon, a short distance from the Ferry, and the farm house and grounds adjacent were filled that night with sleeping Confederate soldiers. After a few days of travel, Mr. Sinclair arrived at home and straightway turned his atten- tion to civil pursuits ;- a lad of scarcely seventeen years, but a veteran of a great war.

That youthful experience in the army proved to be a valuable edu- cational factor in the life of Mr. Sinclair. It gave him some insight into business forms ; it brought him into association with men of many classes, and it gave him independence and self-reliance. He found employment under John S. Barbour, president of a railroad at Alexandria, where he remained until November, 1868, at which time he came west to Mis- souri, locating temporarily at Troy, in Lincoln county, and subsequently at Bowling Green, Pike county, he was employed as deputy in certain of the county offices. This official occupation gave him a desire for legal knowledge, and in 1870 he went south to Greenville, Mississippi, where he took up the study of law under the direction of Colonel W. A. Percy, subsequently speaker of the Mississippi house of representatives, and the father of Senator Leroy Percy of that state. In 1872 he was admitted to the bar, before the supreme court of that state, on examination in open court. The period of reconstruction was then on and conditions there were most intolerable. Negroes hield the offices and carpetbaggers were at the helm, feeding upon the vitals of the people. To evade such a condition Mr. Sinclair returned to Missouri and again established his home in Bowling Green. In 1873 he was admitted to the Pike county bar by Judge Gilchrist Porter. In that same year Bowling Green was first incorporated as a city and he was appointed city attorney by the board of trustees, serving one year in the office. He later supplemented his law practice with occasional newspaper work. Early in 1876 a Republican newspaper was started at Curryville, called the Pike County Express. The politics of the paper did not suit the community and for lack of patronage it was doomed to financial failure. At this juncture Mr. Sinclair was placed in editorial charge of the publication while its regular editor made a trip through Kansas, extending over a period of

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several months. This, however, was long enough to give the new editor an opportunity to change its politics, which he promptly did. This change of front put new life into the enterprise, and on the return of the editor he sold the Express as a Democratic paper. It was subse- quently moved to Bowling Green and became the Bowling Green Times, one of the most famous weekly papers of Missouri.

During the early seventies Mr. Sinclair moved to Louisiana, Mis- souri, and there he was for a short time associated with A. C. Sheldon in the abstract business. In 1879 he was appointed clerk of the committee on engrossed bills in the senate of the Thirtieth General Assembly, which took him to Jefferson City, where he remained during that session of the legislature. He returned to Louisiana and was made reporter for the Riverside Press, now the Press-Journal, and in 1883 went to Washing- ton City. In 1884 he was made clerk of the committee on Woman's Suf- frage in the senate. In the absence of work on that committee he served the chairman, Senator Cockrell, as his private secretary, and remained at the capital during the session of the Forty-eighth Congress.

Returning to Louisiana Mr. Sinclair resumed newspaper work in that city, and in 1894 was elected city attorney of Louisiana, an office which he held for two years. In 1896 he established the Louisiana Herald and ran it until 1903, when he suspended publication. He claims to be the only man on record who ran a newspaper for so long a period on pure, unadulterated wind. Since that time the newspaper field and a more or less desultory law practice occupied his attention until his election to his present position. In the fall of 1910 he was elected clerk of the Louisiana Court of Common Pleas, to succeed Mr. E. Urban, the juris- diction of the court comprising the townships of Buffalo, Calumet, Prairieville and Salt River.

Mr. Sinclair is unmarried and is not identified with any fraternal organization. He has enjoyed the personal acquaintance of many of Missouri's political leaders and has devoted himself to matters which have contributed more to the public weal than they have to his own material advancement.

ISAAC WALTER BASYE, son of William Montgomery and Sarah Jane Gosline, and grandson of John Walter Basye, was born in Bowling Green, Missouri, Monday, August 25, 1845. He is of the seventh generation from Edmond Basye, a Huguenot from France who settled December 21, 1670, in Northumberland county, Virginia. Others of the name came before this shortly after the Mayflower, but left no male descendants. For ages the spirit of better things, higher ideals, independence of thought, and especially independence in worship, has been the controlling idea of the Basyes. In France they either had to bow to Catholicism, suffer martyr- dom, or else stealthily leave the country. They would not bow, and many were massacred, while some took refuge in England. The New World, then opening up, seemed to be a'n inviting field, and, hither they came a little later. One brother returned to England in 1685, joined Dampiere's voyagers, and started to sail around the world. He stopped off on the island of Samar and founded a city there, giving it his name, Basye, or Basey. All who bear this name in America except the German Boese (pronounced bay-ce), and the Austrian, Basey, are of the blood of this Edmond Basye who settled in Virginia. Descendants are still at the old nesting place, near Heathville, Virginia. Coming years brought some of his descendants to the Blue Grass state. One Edmond Basye, great-grand- son of the first Edmond and great-grandfather of I. Walter Basye, came in 1774 and with Mr. Bullitt laid out "Falls of the Ohio," afterwards called Louisville. He built the first house there, and was its first mer-

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A history of northeast Missouri, Vol. 2 pt 2, Part 22

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed Publication date: 1913 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 912

Author: Williams, Walter, 1864- , ed
Publication date: 1913
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 912